Kvatsch showed no reaction. “Would you like a cigarette, Detective Inspector?”
“No thanks.” Hoffner took a drag on his own, and then crushed out Kvatsch’s in the ashtray. “You know, Kvatsch, I don’t think the socialists had you in mind when they started parading out all of these freedoms.”
“Must be up to four or five by now, if you’re this keen for my source, Inspector. And here I thought it was just your run-of-the-mill little murder. Not even front-page material. Tell me, is it true about the knife markings? I think that’s the part that’s going to sell the most papers.”
“We both know it’s going to take me no time to find this out. You can either do yourself a favor, or you can do what you always do. End up a few steps behind, kicking yourself for having been so stupid.” Hoffner enjoyed the momentary flash in Kvatsch’s eyes. “These socialists are an unpredictable bunch. It’s another week before the Assembly votes get tabulated. Who knows where we might be then? Between you and me, Kvatsch, I don’t think this is the time not to have a friend in the Kripo, do you?” Hoffner stood. He crushed out his cigarette. “Just something to think about.”
“I’ll do that,” Kvatsch said icily.
“Good.” Hoffner reached over and took the pack from the desk. He was turning to go when he stopped and said, “Oh, by the way. Nice suit. Just your style, Detective.” Hoffner pocketed the cigarettes and headed for the door.
Fichte had vomited twice, once during a barrel roll, the other just after they had touched down in a field on the outskirts of Kln. To be fair, that last one had been due more to relief than to motion; still, it had brought Fichte in under the limit. Mueller had been banking on at least three such episodes, but Fichte had survived the nosedive and the spinout without so much as a burp. Mueller had been duly impressed. Tonight the drinks were on him.
“You see,” said Mueller as he watched Fichte dry-heave a last string of saliva onto the ground. “I told you you’d get used to it.” He rapped him on the back. “We just need to get you something to settle that stomach.”
Fichte nodded as he stared, hunched over, into his own spew. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his mouth. Oddly enough, he had never felt more exhilarated. He spat, stood, and peered up into the dusking sky.
It was all so unreal, he thought. Thirty kilometers out of Berlin, and the clouds had lifted; the sky had opened, and Fichte had known what it was to be in flight. Mueller had tried explaining it to him over the din of the engine and wind, but Fichte had heard only pieces-nondimensional coefficients, lift-drag ratios-none of which had made even the slightest bit of sense to him. For Fichte, flight was a matter of faith, and with it had come a feeling of such profound solitude-stripped of any hint of loneliness-as to make it completely serene. He could still feel the wind slapping at his face, his hand as he had held it out, its enormity stretching out over houses and fields and rivers, all of them cradled in the thickness of his fingers and palm. There was a vastness to the world at those speeds and at that height, a totality that could easily have provoked a feeling of utter insignificance, but Fichte had felt no less vast. Up there, he had known why Mueller had continued to take to the sky: not for the thrill or for the ego, but for the connection with that totality, a sensation of perfect wholeness only imagined from the ground looking up. At two thousand feet-in an open box made of metal and wood-it was forever in his grasp.
Fichte spat again and placed the handkerchief in his pocket. “A couple of shots of whiskey should do it,” he said.
Mueller laughed. “Oh, I think that can be arranged.”
Mueller knew most of the best spots in and around Kln. In fact, Mueller knew most of the best spots anywhere west of Berlin. He was also not averse to using his disabilities to his advantage. The girls in Kln were known to drop their prices, and various other bits, for a cripple, now and then. Mueller told Fichte he would see what they could do for a cripple’s friend. Fichte thought about mentioning his lungs, but he reckoned the trade-off wasn’t worth the few marks he would save: better to have Mueller thinking him a robust young detective than the jackass who had sucked in on the gas at the wrong time. Of course, it never occurred to Fichte that Mueller might already be wondering why his passenger had managed to miss out on all the fun at the trenches. Mueller was praying that Fichte’s quick departure from the Kaiser’s service had had nothing to do with a certain very delicate area: that was a wound no one liked to talk about. Fichte’s hesitation over the girls had gotten Mueller thinking that maybe the prices were not going to be the real problem tonight.
All such concerns, however, were quickly put to rest five hours later, when Mueller, Fichte, and two willing young ladies stepped into the attic loft that Mueller had found for them over one of the seedier bars in town. It was one room, but Fichte hardly seemed to mind. He had been sustaining a very nice drunk since his third beer, and immediately pulled down his pants the moment the four of them were alone. Mueller laughed at the sudden appearance of Fichte’s shortish but exceptionally thick erection. Mueller tossed his own girl onto the room’s one bed and dove in after her. He then turned to Fichte as the bedded girl began to pull off his clothes.
“What is it with you cops and instant nudity?” said Mueller, slapping at the girl’s hands as she tried to undress him. “Pants down. Service, please. Where’s the romance?” Mueller howled with laughter as the girl found what she had been searching for.
Fichte stood there, chortling quietly to himself as his girl took hold of her prize.
Mueller said, “Nikolai’s the same way, you know. No shame, no patience.”
Hoffner’s name seemed to slap some life into Fichte. He turned to Mueller as he pushed the girl’s face from his crotch. “The Kriminal-Kommissar?” said Fichte, tripping over the last few syllables. He immediately snapped his head back at the girl, who was trying to reacquire her target. “Hey there!” he said. “Hold on a bit.” She laughed and continued to probe. Fichte shrugged and looked back at Mueller. “Herr Hoffner?”
Mueller was having his own trouble concentrating on the conversation. “I could tell you stories,” he said in a throaty tone.
“Really?” said Fichte, teetering as he spoke. “Like what?”
The girl had mounted Mueller and was now riding him with vigor. When he spoke, his words issued in a tom-tom cadence. “Ask him about the pact.”
“About the what?” said Fichte. Fichte’s girl pushed him down onto a chair. She took his hands and strapped them onto her thighs. She, too, began to drive down onto him.
“The pact,” said Mueller, becoming winded. “Just ask.”
The girl on top of Fichte grabbed his face, focused it on her own, and said, “You want to talk, or you want to fuck?”
It took Fichte a moment to find her eyes. She was really quite pretty, he thought. And she had nice big tits. Bigger than Lina’s.
“Fuck, please,” he said.
She grabbed his head and thrust it into her chest. She then began to ride him with even greater abandon. Fichte was glad he had brought his inhaler. He would need a few good sucks before round two.
Hoffner had lain awake for most of the night. He was a periodic insomniac, and, except for the fact that he actually enjoyed the long hours of intense thought, he might have attributed it to some sort of cosmic payback for a waking life of chosen isolation. For some reason, though, dead-of-night focus on a case always left him feeling refreshed in the morning. It was dreaming that exhausted him.
He had come to the conclusion-sometime around 4:00 a.m.-that the note from K might be the only piece of recent information that could lead him forward. Everything else seemed to be generating lateral movement: the grease had introduced the possibility of a military connection; the gloves had raised a whole series of problems-the girl’s transport, the girl herself, and the fact that Wouters was in a different country. Hoffner had considered the “second carver” theory-the smooth versus the jagged and angular strokes-but that hardly explained who the first carver might be, what with Wouters safely locked away in Sint-Walburga. And, of course, there was Luxemburg, which had brought in the Polpo and which, to Hoffner’s way of thinking, was somehow linked to the leak.